Windows 11 is a storage hog. The operating system itself takes up 64GB of space, give or take. With the addition of a few large apps, personal files, and OS updates, you’re more likely to find yourself out of space than figure out what to do about it.

If you’ve been searching for files and folders to delete on your system drive, you may have come across an innocent-looking windows.old folder. Unfortunately, there’s no way to remove it by simply hitting the Delete key. But what’s so special about this folder? Why does it take up so much space? And how can you delete it and free up some valuable storage space? Read on to find out more.

The windows.old folder is created when you upgrade Windows to a new version. This becomes the home base for the old version, which contains temporary files, system files, and a few personal files. This is so that you can revert to the previous version of Windows if necessary. But if everything is working fine and you don’t plan on going back to the older version, it’s better to delete this folder and reclaim some space.

Windows automatically deletes the windows.old folder 30 days after it is created. However, if you need the space right away, you can use the following methods to completely remove the folder.